Monday, January 25, 2010

One of the very first lessons in Insurance 101 is that insurance is risk management, not gambling. I never quite bought into that, especially as regards indemnity-based products (such as health or home insurance). Life insurance is, almost by definition, something of a gamble as well: the fact of one's mortality is a given, the when, however, remains uncertain. I don't really see a contradiction here: after all, risk management and gambling are really just two sides of the (ahem) same coin.

Some scientific folks, though, wonder if there's a connection between buying insurance and playing the numbers:

One of the very first lessons in Insurance 101 is that insurance is risk management, not gambling. I never quite bought into that, especially as regards indemnity-based products (such as health or home insurance). Life insurance is, almost by definition, something of a gamble as well: the fact of one's mortality is a given, the when, however, remains uncertain. I don't really see a contradiction here: after all, risk management and gambling are really just two sides of the (ahem) same coin.

Some scientific folks, though, wonder if there's a connection between buying insurance and playing the numbers: